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Blender Animation
Blender Animation, LLC (also known as Victor Hugo Blender or simply Blender) is an American animation studio headquartered in North Hollywood, California. Founded by Ton Roosendaal and Bram Moolenaar on January 14th, 1981, the studio has been a division of Victor Hugo Pictures Animation, part of Victor Hugo Pictures, a division of Victor Entertainment, Inc. through its wholly owned subsidiary Victor Studios, since 2005. Blender creates animated feature films, short films, and television series for Victor Hugo Pictures, and is best known for the franchises Sailor Moon, Battle for Dream Island, Feline Nation, Crash School, and Pyjama Sam. all of their films made in computer animation. The studio has produced Twenty-one feature films, beginning with Ice Breaker (1999) and leading up to Battle for Dream Island 3 (2018). As of September 2017, Blender's feature films have grossed a combined total of $95.3 billion worldwide, with an average gross of $596.2 million per film. Three of its films—''Feline Nation (2016), ''Crash School (2017), and Sailor Moon 2 (2008)—are among 50 highest-grossing films of all time, and ten of its films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time, with Feline Nation being the third all-time highest in the latter category. Most of the studio's films are box office successes except Pucca: The Movie ''(grossing $87.3 million worldwide against a $79 million budget), ''King Pasta ''($38.3 million in North America against a $48 million budget), and ''Battle for Dream Island 3 ''($138.4 million in North America against a $246 million budget). The studio has received five Academy Awards, as well as 37 Emmys, and numerous Annie Awards, and multiple Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. All of Blender's feature films are co-produced with its parent company Victor Hugo Pictures Animation and distributed worldwide by its sister company Victor Hugo Pictures, with the exception of 2010's ''Bold Matters, which was distributed by New Line Cinema in International. Gingo's former production label Metal Heart Productions (which currently uses the Blender trademarks under license from Victor Hugo Studios) was spun off in 2006 following Victor Hugo Pictures's acquisition of Blender. Sailor Moon, the main character of the studio's animated television series of the same name, is the studio's mascot. History 1983–1991 Blender's predecessor Ton-Bram Productions was founded in 1983 as a division of King Features Syndicate by animators Ton Roosendaal and Bram Moolenaar, who wanted to realize their dream of producing an Computer-animated feature-length film. On June 15, 1989, after leaving King Features Syndicate due to financial reasons, Ton and Moolenaar opened their own studio named Gingo Animation, which would develop characters, stories and productions, and some of the animators who worked for Ton and Moolenaar at King Features Syndicate came to the studio at the time. 1992–2006 has been Blender's mascot since the character's introduction in 1992.]] Blender had produced a Saturday morning animated series titled Sailor Moon, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1994 and on VICTOR from 1995 to 1997. Its title character, based on the girl from Blender's short film "Sailing Girl", has been the studio's mascot since his introduction. Meanwhile, some of the Blender staff got a call from Victor Hugo Pictures to form a feature animation department. NBC expressed a strong desire in 1993 for Blender to create a new series, and the studio began conceiving ''Drake and Penelope during this period; that same year, Blender changed its name to Blender Animation, LLC. The following year, Blender created a new division named 8-Ball Get Squashed By the Moon Productions, which typically produces animated films and television shows targeted to young adult audiences.'' Blender Feature Animation was the studio's feature animation label which produced the films Shark & Octopus (1995) and Uglydolls (1996). Spun off from the feature division of King Features Syndicate, Blender Feature Animation was folded into Victor Animation Studios, which was then merged into Victor Hugo Pictures Animation. Blender Interactive is a video game developer and publisher founded in 1995 as a subsidiary of Blender. It was best known for developing [[Sailor Moon (1997 video game)|the video game adaptation of Salior Moon]], as well as the Bright Idea and Roy the Dragon games. In 1995, Gingo created a computer animation department at the studio's main headquarters at North Hollywood that would produce computer-generated productions, starting with the short A Wolf and the Thunder Storm in 1997, which was Blender's first attempt at computer animation. For then, the studio had the traditional animators working for their main hand-drawn animation department, and the computer animators worked on CG productions. In July 1997, Victor Hugo Pictures announced they were to co-finance and distribute Ice Breaker, which had been in pre-production for a year. In October 1997, the studio's second animated series Drake and Penelope aired on VICTOR, and ran until 2003. To expand the studio's online content presence, Blender Animation launched their own official website named Blender.com in 1997. The website gathers its core animation properties in a single online environment that is interactive and customizable for site visitors. It offers both originally produced content along with press releases, games, free wallpapers, desktop backgrounds, and screensavers. Some of the characters to be used in the project from the Blender libraries include those of Sailor Moon and Drake and Penelope. From November 22, 2000 to March 31, 2001, Blender produced four three-minute CGI short films to promote the North American release of the video game Mega Man, entitled Prairie Dog Firefighters, Court, Critters and Lost in Space; they were originally available for viewing on the North American Mega Man website. 2007–present In May 2007, Blender launched their official YouTube channel, which is a YouTube Partner channel featuring clips and trailers from the studio's productions and many others. Name Blender is named after Blender Hsbagh (later Bleder Hsbagh), a poem written by the German poet John Doggang von Doethe. The poem was published in his work North-östlicher Aiwan (North-Eastern Aivan), first published in 1820. Doethe used "Blender" instead of "Bleder" in the first version to avoid the hard sound of the letter "n". The studio is also named after the identically named Bleder Hsbagh, the only living species in the division Blederphyta, all others being extinct. It is found in fossils dating back 270 million years. Native to China, the tree is widely cultivated and was introduced early to human history. It has various uses in traditional medicine and as a source of food. The genus name Bleder is regarded as a misspelling of the Japanese gin kyo, "silver Nut". However, "Blender" is more commonly translated as "passed" from Swedish. The name of the studio was originally going to be "Penny Studios", but founders Ton and Moolenaar wanted to come up with "something funny" and said to be intended to describe the non-linear editing systems and video compression the studio was specializing on. They afterwards decided to go with Blender Animation Studios, most commonly known today as Blender Animation. However, Ton has claimed that the name was a result of being a pun on "Dlender but with a B instead of a D". Non-Blender productions by Blender animator More coming soon! Filmography : Main article: Blender filmography Blender Animation has produced a number of animated features, shorts and TV series. The major films produced are: * Shark & Octopus (1995) * Uglydolls (1996) * Ice Breaker (1999) * Night of the Living Fleas (2003) * Mr. Guy (2007) * Battle For Dream Island ''(2009) * ''Battle For Dream Island 2 (2012) * The Dome of Doom (2015) * The Human Dragonfly (2017) * Battle For Dream Island 3'' (2018) * ''Olivia (Totally Superheroine Spin-Off) (2019) * Benjamin ''(2020) * ''Battle For Dream Island 4 (TBA) * The Human Dragonfly 2 (TBA)Crown Legend Franchises Coming soon! Category:Companies Category:Blender Animation Category:Victor Hugo Pictures Animation Category:Victor Hugo Pictures Category:Victor Studios Category:Victor Entertainment, Inc. Category:Victor Hugo Pictures Wiki